


Berceuse

by rabbit_hearted



Category: Purple Hyacinth - Ephemerys & Sophism (Webcomic)
Genre: Chef AU, F/M, Hell’s Kitchen with sexual tension, Just don't even bother looking at the chapter count because it will probably change, Modern AU, The fandom needed enemies to lovers Kywi because I said so, They're going to kill each other, We're taking this to flavortown baby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28658109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbit_hearted/pseuds/rabbit_hearted
Summary: Head Chef William Hawkes’ life is perfectly within his control. His kitchen runs like a well-oiled machine: predictable, orderly, consistent......right up until it’s upended by his charismatic and utterly unpredictable new sous chef, Kym Ladell. With a penchant for improvisation and no formal training to speak of, she threatens to throw everything he’s worked so hard to achieve into turmoil.They say that if you can’t stand the heat, you should get out of the kitchen. It’s unfortunate, then, that neither of them are the quitting type.
Relationships: William Hawkes/Kym Ladell
Comments: 76
Kudos: 98





	1. Un

**Author's Note:**

> This is a ~70%-written mini arc because I watched the rom-com No Reservations and have zero self-control.

**Will** ****

* * *

“Why do you come to see me every week?”

Will’s therapist was watching him quizzically and spinning a pencil between his fingertips like a pinwheel. He supposed that the question was bound to arrive sooner or later.

“Because my sous chef told me that she’d quit if I didn’t go to therapy,” Will replied factually. This much was true; Lila Desroses, the sous chef of the esteemed _Berceuse_ and his most-trusted right hand _,_ had, indeed, threatened to quit if he didn’t talk to someone about what she referred to as an “excessive need to be in control at all times.”

“I see,” Oliver March replied, tapping the pencil against his chin. “And why is that?”

Will was standing in front of the window rather than sitting on the chaise across from March’s desk. It felt a little too Freudian.

“I don’t know.”

March made a skeptical noise. “Don’t you?”

He truly didn’t. The restaurant’s popularity had skyrocketed since Will had taken post as head chef, earning it its coveted spot in the upper echelon of the city’s fine dining scene. They’d received features in more publications than he cared to count. Frankly, if a _minor_ control issue was the price he had to pay for his success, it seemed like a fair penance.

“I just…” He trailed off with a sigh, palming at his jaw. “I need everything to be done right. And I don’t trust anyone else to do it.”

“So it’s a trust issue, then.”

Will turned away from the window, blinking. “Well, when you put it _that_ way—”

“It isn’t a bad thing, necessarily,” March cut in, scrawling something in his notepad. Probably something like, _the nutcase shows signs of aggression when questioned._ “The sooner you accept the problem, the sooner you can work to resolve it.”

“It isn’t a problem,” Will replied quickly. “My kitchen runs fine. Great, in fact.”

“Hmm,” March replied.

“What does that mean?”

He shut the front cover of his notepad with a little _swish_. “Have you made any progress on finding a new sous chef?”

With a groan, Will dropped stiffly onto the edge of the chair across from March. Lila was eight months pregnant and he’d been dragging his feet on finding her replacement. He simply didn’t trust anyone as he did her, and after a series of progressively more dismal interviews, he resolved to kick the problem down the road. Unfortunately, said _problem_ was about four weeks out from being born.

“No.”

“You’re running out of time,” March replied blithely, as though Will was not abundantly aware of this fact.

Will hummed, flicking his palm noncommittally. “I’ll handle it.”

March thinned his lips in thought. “You say that a lot.”

“What?”

“‘I’ll handle it.’ You’re used to handling things by yourself.” March set his notepad onto the glass coffee table and leaned forward on his elbows. “But you don’t have to, Will. Asking for help is perfectly normal.”

“I know that,” Will grumbled. “There’s just a lot riding on this. My father…” He trailed off, unsure how the sentence was supposed to end. He realized, of course, that it wasn’t normal for a twenty-three year old man to be so consumed by his father’s opinion of him. And yet, the prospect of his disapproval nagged like a phantom pain. “My father will be unhappy if I make the wrong decision.”

March shrugged. “So he’s unhappy for a while. He’ll move on.”

Will huffed humorlessly. “You don’t know my father.” He glanced at his watch and stood, relieved to find that his session was over. “Try the _mille-feuille_ I left you,” Will said, gesturing at the Tupperware container on the coffee table. “We’re debuting it on the new menu tonight.”

“I’m sure it will be phenomenal, as always,” March murmured. “Although, you don’t have to keep bringing me food. You already pay me.”

“It’s what I do,” Will replied. “And don’t forget to add the—”

“The sauce, yes,” March interjected, waving his palm. “Do give some thought to hiring the new sous chef, Will,” he urged. “You might find yourself looking forward to working with someone new.”

Will snorted. “What I’m looking forward to,” he replied, shrugging on his coat, “Is a perfectly uneventful evening at work.”

**Kym**

* * *

Kym had three observations about _Berceuse._

One, it was immaculately tidy. As in, so tidy that she could see her reflection in every surface. It was an unsettling effect, like standing inside of a mirrorball.

Two, it was stiff. Stiff, starchy tablecloths, stiff uniforms, stiff-lipped expressions. Everyone was walking around like they belonged to the Queen’s Guard, or something.

Three, it was quiet. Kym had gotten into the habit of working to music, so to be met with stark silence upon entering the kitchen felt a bit dreamlike in its utter absurdity.

But rent needed to be paid, and she wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. The job offered a generous salary even by New York City’s standards, enough that she was able to move out of her shoebox-sized apartment into a marginally less shoebox-sized apartment. She could endure most anything for a job that allowed her enough discretionary income to splurge on the luxuries of life, like name-brand cereals instead of the generic crap, and Chinese takeout a few times a month.

She also quite liked Lila Desroses, the sous chef who had interviewed her for the position. The woman was essentially the human embodiment of sunshine, and at eight months pregnant, no less, which was basically Herculean.

After Lila finished giving her the tour of the kitchen (spotless, chrome, impersonal), Kym set up her phone and her bluetooth speaker next to her work station. The aghast looks she received from her new coworkers should have been her first indication that she was headed down a treacherous path, but Kym had never been one for heeding the warning signs until she was already halfway over the cliff.

Kieran White, a waiter she’d taken a particular liking to, paused in the threshold of the kitchen. His dress shirt was a little rumpled and cuffed at the elbows, a fact which somehow made her trust him more. The others were so coiffed they looked like androids.

He tilted his head like a dog with a bone. “Are you playing music?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Kym scoffed under her breath. “God, would it kill you people to have some fun? It’s quieter than a morgue in here. Besides,” she added her eyes still downcast, “We’re near the end of the first act, and it really needs to be appreciated at full volume—”

“If you prefer that you remain employed,” Kieran interjected, reaching around her to adjust the volume on the stereo, “I’d advise against that.”

She volleyed an onion peel into the trash and fixed him with a quizzical look. “Why?”

“Chef Hawkes doesn’t play music in the kitchen.”

“But _why_?”

Kieran shrugged, popping his hip against the edge of the counter. “Says it’s distracting.”

Kym rolled her eyes as she julienned the remaining half of the onion. “Sure seems like there are a lot of _rules_ here.” She’d only been an employee of _Berceuse_ for approximately thirty seven minutes by that point, though she expected as much to be true. Banning music in the kitchen was practically a crime against humanity. “Opera makes food taste better,” she replied factually.

Kieran snorted. “That so?”

“Very much so, pretty boy. The two fundamentals of good food are opera and butter.” She set aside the onion and got to work on the pile of carrots. “Where is Chef Hawkes, anyway?”

Conveniently, it was at this precise moment that a new voice entered the fray, its tone sharp and clear, like the tine of a fork striking a champagne flute. Kym hardly noticed his entrance — she was chopping an onion with one hand and mock-orchestrating _Le Nozze di Figaro_ with the other, and in her humble defense, it was quite hard to hear over the operatic stylings of Mozart.

 _“_ There’s music playing.”

Kym’s head snapped up from her cutting board, the tip of her knife still poised in place. A hush fell over the kitchen so abruptly that it almost felt synchronized, as though they all belonged to some sort of improv comedy troupe.

In the doorway stood Chef William Hawkes, a culinary wunderkind she had only ever seen in newspaper articles and the odd television interview. She wasn’t above admitting that she felt a little starstruck in his presence. His career had enjoyed a meteoric rise attributed to a combination of his unparalleled skill and young age; at only twenty-three, he was whip-sharp and patently unapologetic in his craft, and he made a truffle risotto _Le Journal_ had once referred to as prodigal.

His shiny loafers squeaked against the linoleum as he ventured further into the kitchen. “Why is there music playing?”

Without the din of idle chatter, there was only the ambient hissing of the frying pans and the steady drip of the faucet. It felt a bit like a Western shootout, all of them poised mutely in place as they were.

Kym, resigned to her grim fate, squared her shoulders and took a half-step forward. “It’s mine.”

She imagined that if they were living in a television sitcom, this would be the place where they’d insert an audience gasping effect. Chef Hawkes’ blue eyes halted on her and stayed there, sizing her up from the tips of her worn sneakers to the top of her head. “I’m sorry,” he said slowly, his tow head tilted. “Who are you?”

“I’m Kym Ladell.” He blinked blankly at that until he added, “Your new sous chef.”

He froze, mouth twitching slightly, as though he was debating saying something and then thought better of it.

“I already _have_ a sous chef.”

As though on cue, Lila walked — or, more accurately, _waddled_ — around the corner with one hand placed over her pregnant belly, the other balancing a tray of asparagus. She drew to a slow stop, apparently oblivious to the daggers Will was glaring into the wall. If looks could kill, that poor drywall would be dead on arrival.

“Hey, Will!” Lila chirped. “You met Kym?”

Kym was vaguely aware that the kitchen staff were watching the spectacle unfold with ill-disguised curiosity, though Will made no move to dispel it. He crossed his arms over his chest, frowning. “What’s this about?”

“I’m sorry for not telling you sooner,” Lila replied sheepishly, setting the asparagus onto the counter. “If we didn’t find a replacement soon, I was starting to worry I’d have this baby behind the stove.”

“You interviewed her,” Will clarified slowly, his voice a velvet rumble. “Without asking me.”

Lila’s silence was apparently all the confirmation he needed. Will pulled a hand over his jaw and blinked up at the overhead lights. He was still staring at the ceiling when he addressed Kym again, and she wondered, idly, whether he was saying a prayer or willing his death to arrive sooner.

“Who have you trained under?”

He was quite handsome, even bathed in that unforgiving fluorescence. All-American corn-fed looks, like something you’d see on the front of a Wheaties box. A soft, vaguely effeminate sort of face, with sweeping lashes and petal pink lips and a chin that tapered off into a neat little point.

Kym blinked and shook her head. “No one. I mean,” She elaborated with a flourish of her wrist, “No one you’d know.”

Those blue eyes roved over her face searchingly, as though in pursuit of an answer to a question she hadn’t yet asked. “No one I would know,” he echoed flatly.

Kym nodded. “Unless you’re acquainted with the ninety-eight year old grandmother I met while backpacking through a village in Florence.” She whistled through her teeth. “Man, did she make a mean _sugo di Pomodoro_. She simmered it for twelve hours.”

His complexion paled a little. “You don’t have any formal training?”

“Nope.”

Will’s jaw locked with a little click. “Fantastic,” he gritted, raking his hand through his hair. “I’ll be in my office.”

“Will,” Lila sighed, pushing off of the counter. “Just wait a minute—”

He whirled on her, scowling. “You should have told me you were interviewing for the sous chef position, Lila.”

It was then that Kym noticed that Chef Hawkes had a rather curious disposition about him. He didn’t have the makings of the typical head chef — brash, mercurial, prone to throwing pans across the room in a fit of petulance — rather, he was somewhat soft, even in anger. He wasn’t yelling, exactly, though his voice was innately commanding all the same.

Kym’s eyes narrowed onto his retreating form as he breezed through the swinging doors and disappeared down a narrow hallway. She was militantly avoiding thinking too intently about the way his black chef’s coat pinched tautly over his broad shoulders when she finally returned her gaze to Lila.

“What’s his problem?”

Kym realized that she was being petulant, but it wasn’t as though she was some _amateur_ , for God's sake. Sure, she hadn’t trained under a Michelin-star chef, but that didn’t mean she was any less worthy of being there. She could cook circles around the best of them.

“Get back to work, everyone,” Lila tutted, tossing a reprimanding look around the room. It was only when the kitchen staff reluctantly lapsed back into motion that she turned back to Kym, her mouth folded into a sympathetic frown. “I’m sorry about that, Kym. Will is…”

 _A pretentious ass,_ Kym might have helpfully supplied, had she not been more concerned with remaining gainfully employed.

“…Particular,” Lila finished eventually.

“You forgot to mention that in the interview,” Kym grumbled, turning back to her cutting board. She resumed slicing her produce with more force than strictly necessary, as though it was the carrot that she held her vendetta against.

Lila rubbed her palm over her round belly in a slow circuit, her expression thoughtful. “He’ll come around eventually. Once he sees how good you are.”

Kym hummed skeptically. “Let’s hope so,” she replied, glancing meaningfully at Lila’s belly. “Otherwise, this is going to be a long maternity leave.”

* * *

He arrived to the staff dinner that evening with a menu tucked under his arm and an expression on his face that immediately suggested that his mood hadn’t improved.

“It’s a new menu night,” Kieran muttered, peering down at the paper. “Which means that he’ll be even more stressed than usual.”

“Is that even possible?” Kym scoffed.

“Yes,” Kieran replied plainly.

The menu was just a single piece of cream cardstock. Seven entrees, three appetizers, two desserts, all of them written in French. She was familiar with all of the dishes, of course, despite the fact that her experience was based primarily in Italian cuisine. It was a well-constructed menu: Elegant but not pretentious, diverse but not overwhelming. Kym snatched the paper from Kieran’s hand and tucked it under her arm. “Do you have them all memorized?” She questioned, grinning.

“Of course,” Kieran replied, all cocksure confidence. She rolled her eyes in feigned annoyance. 

“Name one of the evening’s specials, and suggest a wine pairing to go with it.”

“The lamb chops with cognac cream sauce and braised lentils. I’d suggest a full-bodied red with that, either the Cabernet Sauvignon, or the Chianti.”

“Not bad, pretty boy,” Kym conceded, leaning over to ruffle his hair. “Keep this up and you might get employee of the month.”

“Really?” Kieran replied dryly. “I was thinking you were _definitely_ on track to get it before me—”

He yelped when she grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked.

“ _Ow_ , damn it—”

“Alright, listen up,” Will announced, drawing to a stop at the head of the table. His gaze briefly lingered on Kym’s palm and then darted away.He steeled his palms against the table in an austere manner, as though he was a conqueror assessing a military strategy board.

“We’re debuting the fall menu tonight. You all know the drill. Familiarize yourselves with everything, especially the specials.” His tone and taut posture owed to the effect of a drill sergeant. She wondered whether Will was a military brat and reminded herself to ask Lila about it later.

“Yes, Chef,” the staff chorused.

Everyone dug into the spread without preamble. The food was all prepared perfectly, which was unsurprising, but the bordelaise sauce on the wagyu steak was so good that her eyes rolled to the back of her skull and nearly stuck there. Eating had never felt so baptismal.

“I’m going to die,” she declared around a mouthful of it. “And I’ll be happy about it, because I tasted this.”

The food was only marginally better than the company, though it was a close call. Kym was naturally sociable, but she found the staff of _Berceuse_ to be particularly easy to get along with, with perhaps the only exception being the sour-faced line cook, Lukas, who was evidently the person responsible for knocking up the sous chef. Even despite his frightening demeanor, she found his bluntness amusing and had taken to affectionately referring to him as Grumpy Cat.

“So it’s _your_ fault I’m replacing the sous chef,” Kym joked, spearing a piece of steak with her fork. “I’d venture to guess you’re not at the top of the list of Will’s favorite people.”

Lukas rolled his dark eyes. He had a craggy sort of face, all jutting points and sharp angles that left shadows in their wake. “Few people are. My wife is an exception to a rule.”

“What’s your secret?” Kym questioned, turning to Lila with a lazy smirk. “Snake oil?”

“Black magic, actually,” Lila murmured coyly, placing her cheek in her upturned palm.

Kym sprawled her legs out in front of her like a cat in the sun. “This food might have been laced with black magic,” she mumbled, laying her palms over her distended belly. “I feel like I’m in a coma.”

“Don’t fall asleep,” Lila joked, nudging her ribs with her elbow. “I still have to train you tonight.”

“Ah, work,” Kym replied begrudgingly, as though she’d forgotten her reason for being there. “Right.” She sat up and glanced at the head of the table to find that Chef Hawkes wasn’t eating but scrawling something feverishly in a composition notebook. His shoulders were curled in tightly, his brow drawn low. She couldn’t see the notebook’s contents from her vantage point, but his expression suggested that it was critically important.

“Why isn’t he eating?” Kym asked quietly. She didn’t know why she was so concerned by this fact. He hadn’t exactly been a beacon of hospitality in the one interaction they’d had.

Lila followed the path of her gaze. “Oh. Will never eats at the staff meals. He uses this time to prep.”

“Won’t he be hungry later?”

She shrugged. “Probably.”

“And nobody’s ever told him to eat before?”

Lila chuckled under her breath. “If you haven’t already guessed, he can be a bit stubborn.”

Kym snorted as she pushed her chair out from the table. “You don’t say?” She muttered, filling up a new plate with food. “How positively shocking.”

Her brow creased with confusion. “What are you doing?”

“I’m bringing him food.”

Lila’s expression melted into concern, as though Kym had just suggested that they dump ice in all of the fryers. “You don’t have to do that, Kym.”

“I’m mingling,” Kym retorted. Frankly, she found his insistence on disliking her to be off-putting. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t ever been disliked by a person before, but she found _his_ disapproval to be particularly needling.

Kym dropped into the empty seat beside Will, observing him quietly.Now that she was closer, she could see that he was planning the evening’s station assignments. There was a grid composed of a dozen squares, and his name was written right next to hers in his blocky, boyish penmanship.

“Am I an occupational hazard, or something?”

Will jumped, startled. His palm went up to cover his paper, as though he was scrawling down launch codes, or something. “Hasn’t anyone told you it’s impolite to sneak up on people?”

“No,” Kym replied factually. She pointed to his notebook. “You put me at the station next to yours.”

He blinked slowly. “And?”

“And,” she drawled, narrowing her eyes, “I don’t need a baby-sitter. I’ve only burned down three kitchens, and two of those times weren’t _technically_ my fault.”

His lips flattened into a mirthless line. “Tell me you’re—”

“Joking. Obviously.”

“Was it obvious?” He questioned faintly, looking a little peakish.

“Anyway,” Kym replied sunnily, pushing the plate in his direction. “I brought you food.” She sat back and twined her fingers neatly in her lap.

Will blinked blankly down at the food. It seemed likely that no one had ever done this for him before, though when he spoke, his tone lacked any semblance of gratitude. “I’m not hungry.”

“You will be,” Kym argued. “You’ll need energy for tonight.” She didn’t add that the purplish shadows under his eyes suggested he hadn’t gotten a solid night’s rest since the first coming.

But he had already redirected his attention back to his notebook, as though he had tired of the conversation. “I won’t,” he murmured absently.

Kym bristled, irritated by his nonchalance. “What if you pass out? Low blood sugar is a serious issue. I hear that one in three people are affected by it.” She hadn’t actually heard this, but it seemed true enough. 

At last, Will shifted his placid gaze to her face and held it there. He was looking at her like she was a problem he was trying to solve. “I won’t pass out, Ladell.” His eyes were inconceivably blue, the precise color you’d find under the textbook definition.

“Do you wear colored contacts?” She blurted.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Kym muttered. “You should try the _coq au vin_. It’s exceptional. Divine, really. When I die, I want to be reincarnated as it.”

“I’ve already tried the _coq au vin,_ ” he replied. His accent was a little husky, curling around the French words like a plume of heady smoke. “I’ve tried all of it. I made the menu.”

“ _Fais-toi plaisir,”_ she grumbled. He closed his notebook and stood, tucking it under his arm like a football. She trotted to keep step beside him as he left the dining room, which was no small feat, given that the man had obscenely long legs. “Why are you so mad at me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffed, pushing through the set of double doors to the administrative offices. “I’m not mad.”

“You’re very mad,” Kym asserted. “If I’m Julius Caesar, you’re Brutus. Minus the stabbing.”

He drew to an abrupt stop, causing Kym’s face to collide with his back. She winced, rubbing the bridge of her nose. It was like hitting marble.

“Look,” he gritted, whirling on her. Kym realized, for the first time, that they were completely alone in the drafty hallway. Judging by his thunderous expression, this fact did not seem to bode exceptionally well for her odds of leaving the encounter unscathed. She wondered if he’d just kill her right then and there, leaving her body to rot next to the frozen chicken thighs and arugula lettuce. “This is my kitchen. I’ve worked hard to get here, and I’m not going to let anyone jeopardize it.”

Kym crossed her arms over her chest, scowling. “Who said I’m trying to jeopardize it?”

“You don’t have any training—”

Kym held up a finger, silencing him. “I told you that I don’t have any _formal_ training. It’s not like I just waltzed in here off of the street.”

“Same difference,” he replied, turning his nose up. “You’ve never worked in fine dining before. The standards are higher.”

Her jaw was clenched so tightly she feared it might burst into talcum powder. “I suppose what they say about never meeting your idols is true,” she muttered.

“What’s that?”

Kym blinked, startled by his sudden closeness. His cold gaze flitted over her restlessly, biting her skin in the places it touched. She was near enough to notice that the light passed through his flaxen lashes and left patchwork shadows on his sharp cheekbones. He was stupidly good-looking, which only infuriated her more, if only because it was a waste of an excellent pair of eyelashes.

With a scoff,Kym turned to leave and paused, her hand curled over the doorknob. She was facing it when she replied, too furious to meet his gaze.

“That you aren’t supposed to,” she finished woodenly. Without waiting for his reply, she wrenched open the door and let it slam shut behind her.


	2. Deux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gaze upon the new chapter count. 
> 
> :)

**Will**

He’d never seen anyone cook quite like Kym Ladell.

His sous chefs couldn’t have differed more in disposition or style. Lila cooked with all of the textbook finesse he knew her superiors had cultivated in her in culinary school and, later, her apprenticeships. Kym, on the other hand, navigated the kitchen as though trying to recall a dream before it slipped through the ethers of her memory. She was lithe, precise, somehow both unpracticed and deeply restrained.

Kym’s eyes locked with his as she slid table fourteen’s finished risotto over the steel countertop. Her cheeks were pinkened cutely with flush, owing to the effect of a tiny, scowling doll.

She tilted her head challengingly. “Problem?”

They were three hours into her first shift, and Kym had been handling the dinner rush with expert grace.She had hardly needed Lila’s guidance before effectively taking over her post, managing the prep and line cooks as seamlessly as though she’d always been a facet of _Berceuse._

He looked down at the plate, frowning. “Your risotto is a little under.”

Will didn’t know why he said it. Her risotto was perfect, just like everything else she’d produced. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she’d spent the past three hours reducing his kitchen staff to a bunch of besotted puppies. He suspected that half of them were prepared to propose marriage that very evening if given the chance.

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “No, it isn’t.” She glanced at the ticket, then back to his face. “It’s perfect.”

Will, thrown by her response, blinked. He wasn’t accustomed to being challenged so directly. “It’s under,” he repeated firmly. “Have Randall put a new one on.”

“But—”

“Now, Ladell.”

For a moment, Will wondered if she’d refuse him. She watched him with unflinching gal, her chin pitched forward defiantly, her lips thinned into a quivering line. He could practically hear the slew of profanities she was doubtlessly uttering in her head.

But when she spoke, her voice was uncharacteristically subdued. “Yes, chef.”

Oddly, he felt anything but gratified as she turned away to relay the order to Randall. He was still watching her when Lila slid up next to his station. She leaned her elbow against the counter and tossed him a knowing sidelong glance.

“She’s amazing, isn’t she?” She murmured.

“She’s _good_ ,” Will grumbled, returning his attention to his saucepan. He stirred his spoon aimlessly around the reduction sauce he was simmering.

Lila snorted. “She’s amazing, Will. Better than me, at any rate.”

“She’s good,” he repeated firmly. “Let’s not get carried away. It’s only her first night.”

She pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose with her thumb. “If she’s so _good_ , then why did you tell her to toss out a perfectly fine risotto?”

Will stilled his hand. When he turned to look at her, she was watching him keenly, her gaze bright with gentle amusement. “You heard that?”

“Sure did.” Lila bent over to wipe an errant dab of sauce off of the rim of a dessert she was plating. “Do you want to know what I think?”

“Do I have a choice?”

She slid the plate over the finished plate over the counter and turned back to Will. “I think you’re in denial.”

He had long-ago learned that the most dangerous thing a person could do was doubt Lila Desroses. If it weren’t for the fact that he recognized the coy grin that tugged at the edges of her lips, he might have written off the guileless expression she was giving him for something far more unassuming than he knew it to be.

“Stop doing that,” Will snapped.

Her brown eyes blinked behind her spectacles. “Doing what?”

“ _That_ ,” he replied, gesturing vaguely at her face. “That _look.”_

“I’m not giving you a look.”

His eyes narrowed disbelievingly. “Right,” he drawled.

“All I’m saying,” Lila replied slowly, “Is that she’s great. Better than you anticipated, I’d bet.” Lila turned to leave and hesitated, tilting her head in his direction. Her grin widened, evidently seeing something in his expression that confirmed her suspicions. “And I think you know it.”

* * *

He was too exhausted to tell her to get off the counter.

It was late, and there had been a pressure carving at his right temple like a jackhammer for the past three hours, and his new sous chef was sitting on his counter. She had a plate of spaghetti in her lap and was swinging her legs out in front of her in a lazy, lilting arc, as though she was sitting on a swing.

“You look like hell,” she told him blithely, peering at him with one eye squinted shut. “Like an animated corpse.”

“ _Thanks_ ,” Will quipped, glancing around the dimmed kitchen. He’d been doing paperwork in his office and hadn’t noticed that most of the staff had left. “What time is it?”

“Little past one.”

Will dragged the heel of his palm over his temple, massaging it in a slow circuit. “Lost track of time,” he muttered.

“I’ll say,” Kym replied dryly, bobbing a shoulder in a shrug.

He withdrew a rag from beneath the counter and pretended to busy himself with wiping down the already-spotless chrome. Despite his best attempts to ignore her, she was impossible to compartmentalize, needling through the gaps in his consciousness like a draft under a door.

“Why did you make me throw out that risotto?” Kym asked suddenly.

Will sucked a harried breath through his teeth. If another person brought up that damn risotto, he was certain he would end up committing homicide. “It was—”

“It wasn’t under,” Kym interjected. Her cheeks bulged childishly around a mouthful of spaghetti. “I could make a risotto with my eyes closed.”

“Why did you ask me if you’re so sure you know the answer, then?” Will asked tautly. He set the rag down and drew to a stop in front of her, peering down at the contents of her plate. “And where did you even find spaghetti in here?”

“I brought it.”

He blinked. “Do you travel everywhere with spaghetti on your person?”

“Of course,” Kym responded plainly, as if such a thing was perfectly mundane. “Do you want some?”

Will’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why are you always trying to feed me?”

“First of all,” Kym huffed, “Cool it with the hyperboles. I’m not _always_ trying to feed you. It’s happened twice.” He opened his mouth to interject and she flicked her palm in a motion evidently meant to silence him. “And second of all, the food isn’t poisoned, if that’s what you’re getting at.” She took a bite to punctuate her statement.

“Uh huh,” he replied. “I’m fine, thanks.”

Kym hitched her thumb toward the bubbling saucepan to her left. “My Italian grandmother whispered the recipe for this sauce to me on her death bed. I brought it over from the old country specifically so that you could try it.”

“That story sounds dubious at best,” Will murmured, glancing down at the pan.

“Scout’s honor,” Kym vowed cheekily, placing her palm over her heart. He realized, then, that this was the longest conversation they’d engaged in that hadn’t devolved into an argument. Their temporary truce crystallized in the air between them, as fragile as a spider’s web. Inexplicably, he didn’t wish to dispel it just yet.

With a sigh, Will withdrew a spoon from the cupboard and skimmed it over the top of the pan. He felt her watching him in his periphery, her tawny eyes narrowed onto his face like a laser beam as he lifted the spoon to his lips.

It tasted how a summer rain felt, sweet and tangy and just a little bit sharp. The acidity of the tomato was offset by something woodsy that he couldn’t immediately place, teasing at the tip of his tongue evasively. She heard her make a self-satisfied hum when his eyes drifted shut on their own accord.

“Sage,” Kym said, as though she could hear his thoughts. “That’s what you’re tasting. And a little cinnamon.”

Will blinked his eyes open and looked at her. A smirk twitched at the edges of her lips. “Cinnamon?”

“It’s the secret ingredient. Greek, technically.” She hopped down from the counter and spun to face him, tilting her chin up expectantly. “So?”

Will turned off the burner and put the spoon in the dishwasher, suddenly unable to meet her gaze. He knew what she was asking, of course. He also knew that he was being petulant in pretending that he didn’t. “So, what?”

She blew a gusty sigh threw her cheeks. “It was good, wasn’t it?”

It was incredible. He had never considered food poetically until he tried her sauce and realized that food could taste like the things that composed it and the memory it evoked all the same. He was desperate to know how she had managed to do that, to confirm whether it was something she had learned, or possessed innately.

Will glanced at his ruddied reflection in the stovetop and schooled his features into indifference. “It was fine,” he lied. To a chef, _fine_ was among the most insulting words that existed in the English lexicon. To loathe a chef’s food meant that it at least inspired a feeling where none once existed, but _fine_ was nothing. It was worse than nothing.

Anger fanned over Kym’s features like a cool breeze. She rolled her jaw in a slow circuit, considering his reply. “Right,” she gritted, after a pause. “I forgot. It would wound your _pride_ to admit that it’s good.”

“My _pride_?” He drawled. She was, as usual, irritatingly accurate in her assumption. “Is that so?”

“I’m just some backwoods, self-taught hillbilly—”

“God, Ladell.” Will pulled his heavy hand over his face. When he spoke, his words were muffled under his palm. “You have got to be the most stubborn person I’ve ever met.”

Kym barked a humorless laugh at that. It twisted her sharp features cruelly, a far cry from the way her genuine mirth softened her expression.

“Well, chef,” she replied, sweeping her arm out in front of her. “I guess it takes one to know one.”

Will registered a distant, stabbing guilt at the sight of her crestfallen expression. It was sharp and visceral, whispering up his spine like an icy poker. He shook his head, as though physically dispelling the thought. “I suppose it does,” he muttered at last, turning to leave.

The statement was a concession, but neither emerged with a clear victory.

**Kym**

It was becoming increasingly evident that Chef Hawkes would have rather stuck his hand in the food processor than deign to resolve the situation amicably.

In the vast expanses of time in which he wasn’t looking for something or giving her a task, he avoided her like she was an infectious disease. The longest conversation they’d had in the days that followed lasted for thirteen seconds, which Kym knew because she had counted it in her head. He asked her if she’d seen the stand mixer, and she told him that he hadn’t, and then he replied, “Okay.” Kym marked their new record in her notes app.

Truth be told, his insistence on disliking her rankled her. She paid her taxes on time, used reusable shopping bags at the grocery store, gave a few dollars to the Salvation Army Santas at Christmas. She’d never even gotten a parking ticket, except for that one time she accidentally left her car in a tow zone (Which wasn’t even _technically_ her fault, given that it was unmarked, not that anyone was asking for _her_ opinion). She was uncontroversially likable. Like a sunrise, or a golden retriever.

On their fifth day of working together, Kym was deglazing her roux when she felt his eyes on her in her periphery. He watched her often, which she might have found flattering, had she not known his reason for doing so.

“Can I help you, chef?” Kym asked sweetly, her eyes still on the pan. She tossed in a pinch of flour and watched it dissolve.

Will watched her for a moment, his head tilted. “Where did you learn how to cook?”

She ran her whisk down the center of the pan, measuring the thickness of the sauce. A proper roux parted cleanly when cooked properly. It wasn’t hard to make, but it was temperamental. Add too much flour and it congealed, too much fat and it liquified. Kym flicked off the burner and turned her head to look at him. He was watching her with a scowl, which she was starting to recognize as his default expression. “Everywhere, really.” She shrugged. “We can’t all be _classically trained._ ”

His eyes narrowed at the barb. “Where’s everywhere? You had to have learned from someone.”

Kym grimaced and turned back to the counter, busying herself with clearing her station. In truth, she’d left home at eighteen with fifty dollars and a ratty backpack to her name. She hadn’t dreamed of making it in the culinary industry since she was a child, in the way that most of her peers did. Rather, it found her serendipitously; she’d been hauling her laundry to the laundromat one morning and noticed that the little diner she lived next to was hiring a line cook.

“My first cooking job was at a greasy spoon in Brooklyn, technically. I made twelve dollars an hour.” She tapped her whisk against the edge of the skillet. “Best job I’ve ever had.”

He huffed. “Seriously?”

“It taught me _integrity_ ,” Kym replied pointedly. “I worked there for two years to save enough up money to backpack around Italy. That was where I picked up the cuisine.”

“You think I lack integrity,” Will replied. There was a challenging edge to his voice that lifted the end of the statement up into a question. Kym wrung her dish towel over the sink and then turned to face him, only narrowly resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

“I didn’t say that.”

His blue eyes glimmered dangerously. “You didn’t have to.”

“Oh, so you’re a mind-reader now, too?” Kym snapped, pushing off of the counter. She stalked towards the walk-in freezer, her palms curled into taut fists at her sides. “Do you have any other talents I should know about?”

Will fell into step behind her, his footsteps tapping an even metronome against the linoleum. He was close enough that Kym could feel his breath against the nape of her neck, and she loathed the pesky little tingle the sensation sent up her spine.

“You think you’re better because you’re self-taught. That you don’t need to follow the same rules as everyone else—”

“ _I’m_ the one who thinks I’m better?” Kym wrenched open the door to the freezer and whirled around to face him, planting her palms flat on her hips. “That’s rich, coming from you. You’ve hated me from the moment you met me—”

“I don’t _hate you_ ,” Will scoffed. His breath curled a transient cloud in the frigid air. “It isn’t personal. I already told you that.”

“You could’ve fooled me,” Kym drawled, pitching her chin forward. “Considering the reception I’ve gotten.”

“What were you expecting, a red carpet? I didn’t even know you’d been hired.”

Kym knew that she was treading into dangerous territory. Despite the fact that Chef Hawkes was an insufferable prick, he was still her boss, and she rather enjoyed having a consistent source of income and health insurance. Kym pressed her lips together and narrowed her gaze onto a water stain on the ceiling.

He shuffled his feet uncertainly, evidently thrown by her silence. “What are you thinking?”

 _I’m thinking that I’m dangerously close to ruining my spotless criminal record,_ Kym mused. It was mostly a joke, though she presumed that the eternally unsmiling Chef Hawkes wouldn’t find it particularly funny.

“You’re right.”

The ensuing pause was laden with skepticism. “What?”

Reluctantly, she returned her gaze to him. He’d rolled the sleeves of his jacket up to the elbows, and his stupidly muscular forearms were dusted with flour.For his innumerable flaws, she had to hand it to him: He was the most hands-on head chef she’d ever worked under. Kym had a hard time respecting a superior that couldn’t get their hands dirty with the rest of them.

“I said that you’re right,” she grumbled. For a moment, they simply stared at one another, like something out of _Animal Planet._ She couldn’t discern who was the predator and who was the prey. “Would you like me to say it in Italian?”

Will’s mouth dropped open to reply, but he paused when the door to the freezer opened again, spilling slats of harsh light in from the kitchen. Lila’s gaze slid between them before landing firmly on Will, her brows pinched together in confusion.

“What’s going on in here? The dinner rush is going crazy out there.”

“Nothing,” they replied simultaneously. They tossed each other a mirrored look of disdain, and then Will added, “We were having a conversation.”

“And getting hypothermia, apparently,” Lila added.

Will’s pale brow twitched into his hairline. He set his jaw and turned to Kym, his expression pained, as though he loathed what he was about to say. “A truce,” he grumbled, holding his hand out.

Kym stared at his proffered palm with undisguised bewilderment. “What?”

“A truce,” he repeated impatiently. “Would you like me to say it in French?”

“No,” Kym snapped, tapping her foot against the floor. “Why?”

Lila muttered something about not having time for their antics and breezed back into the kitchen, letting the door click shut behind her.

Slowly, Will lowered his hand. “I have a kitchen to run, Ladell. I don’t have time for —” He flicked his palm between them, “Whatever _this_ is. And I also don’t have time to interview anyone else before Lila has the baby, so…” His mouth flattened. “Let’s just call a truce.”

Kym tapped her chin thoughtfully. “On two conditions,” she murmured.

“ _Conditions_?” He spluttered. “Seriously?”

She ignored him. “First, you have to admit that that risotto wasn’t under. Because it _wasn’t._ And secondly,” her mouth twisted into a wry grin, “You have to admit that you liked my pasta sauce. More than liked it. You _loved_ it. You’d marry it, if you could—”

“Enough,” Will interjected. “I am _not_ saying that—”

“Fine. I’ll settle for ‘Your risotto was perfectly cooked’ and ‘I can still taste your sauce in my dreams’, respectively.”

“I’m _definitely_ not saying that,” Will groused. “I’ll admit that the risotto was fine. I was being … stubborn.”

Kym’s grin widened.

“And the sauce was …” He sighed. “Great. Fantastic, actually. Are you happy now?”

“Very,” Kym purred, clasping his palm in hers. “A truce it is.”

Will's broad fingers spanned over the top of her palm, his skin warm and dry against her own. The pad of his thumb swirled around the ridge of her knuckle just once, an inexplicably tender gesture. He was looking at her with his brows pulled inward, as though puzzling out something in her expression. She found that he had a habit of looking at her that way, as though her face was a question he’d like to know the answer to.

He tilted his head inquiringly. “I need my hand back, Ladell.”

“Right,” Kym coughed. She dropped her hand and dusted it against her pant leg. “Okay.”

A grin twitched briefly at his mouth. He smoothed it under his palm, as though tamping down a wrinkle in a t-shirt. “Okay.”

“I’ll just go, then,” Kym muttered. She shook her head clearingly and pulled open the door, not chancing a glance back in his direction. 

Strange man.

**Will**

He blinked into wakefulness with an awful crick in his neck and a balance sheet stuck to his cheek.

Will peeled the paper off of his face and peered at the clock in his office, only mildly surprised to find that he’d fallen asleep while doing paperwork yet again. He might have minded his spontaneous naps less if they were actually refreshing, but they were all plagued with the same muddied, swirling visions of unbalanced checkbooks and burnt steaks. He could only imagine the field day March would have unpacking that one.

“You’ve got some drool on your face.”

Will turned to find Kym leaning against the doorframe of his office. She pointed to her cheek. “Right there.”

Will swiped his palm across his face, grimacing. “Thanks,” he muttered. “What are you still doing here?”

She held up the bundle of fabric draped over her arm. “Forgot my jacket.”

He felt inexplicably embarrassed by the spartan state of the office, if only because she seemed like the type of person to own an unreasonable amount of tchotchkes. And things that came in bright colors. But her gaze was placid as it drifted over the metal filing cabinet, the tidy, mahogany desk, the sparse walls. They were bare of family mementos, adorned instead with the awards and articles the restaurant had received over the years. “Do you always sleep in here?”

Will leaned back in his chair and crossed one of his legs over the other. Having her in here made him uncomfortable in a way he couldn’t put his finger on. If Kym Ladell was a lot to handle under normal circumstances, the effect was heightened in an enclosed space. “Not on purpose.”

Kym made a low noise of affirmation and ventured further into the room, leaning in to read a feature the New York Times had done on the restaurant last year. She snorted, her eyes narrowing on the second paragraph.

“‘At only twenty-two, Hawkes has cemented his legacy among culinary royalty such as —’”

His cheeks flamed with heat. “Stop reading that.”

Kym tossed him an amused look over her shoulder. “Are they always that doting?” 

He scratched his jaw uncomfortably. Most of the press were cordial, but there had been that reporter from the Wall Street Journal that had asked him for drinks under the guise of gathering more information for the profile piece she was writing on him last spring. It was a particularly uncomfortable rejection. “I wouldn’t use the word _doting._ ”

“Adoring, mesmerized, besotted—”

“Is there something you need from me, Ladell?” He sighed, turning back to his desk. “I have work to do.”

She rocked back on her heels and watched him silently for a long moment. Will tapped his pen against his desk, restless under her scrutiny. When Kym fixed him with the force of her undivided attention, it was as though she was seeing him through to the bone, past the bravado and the accolades and the success.

Needless to say, he loathed the feeling.

“I think that you should take tomorrow night off,” she said. It was a little rushed, the words drifting together homogeneously.

He set his pen down slowly and turned back around to face her. “What?”

“I said that I think that you should take tomorrow night off. Lila and I can handle running the kitchen on our own.”

“No,” he replied, adopting the tone he used to indicate that that the subject was non-negotiable. It reminded him uncomfortably of his father.

Her features grew coy as she considered his reply. “You don’t trust two women to run the kitchen in your absence? That’s rather sexist of you, chef.”

Will tightened his jaw. “Are you calling me sexist?”

“No. I’m saying that if, hypothetically, you were to think two women incapable of running your kitchen in your absence, then you would, hypothetically, be sexist.”

Will pulled a fortifying breath through his teeth and pressed his hands into his pockets, as though he didn’t trust what they might do if left unattended. “Thank you for clarifying, Ladell,” he drawled. “That clears it up entirely.”

Kym smiled, folding an impish little dimple in the corner of her mouth. She looked unreal, like a pixie, or a wood nymph. He wondered which mythological storybook she’d crawled out of with the intent to systematically dismantle his life.

“You’re welcome,” Kym chirped. “So, you’re either a sexist or an undiagnosed workaholic. Pick your poison.”

He huffed humorlessly. “Small choice in rotten apples, I guess.”

“Look, now that we have this _truce_ ,” She drew the word out with slow emphasis, “You can trust that I won’t burn the kitchen down in your absence. At least, not intentionally.”

Will’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why do you want me gone so badly?”

Kym blinked a little dazedly, as though she hadn’t been expecting the question. “You look like you haven’t gotten a break in days,” she replied. “Keeping you around is more of an occupational hazard at this point. You might sleepwalk into an open flame, or something.”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb. There was something distinctly unsettling about the wicked gleam in her gaze. It lingered just out of reach, like the vague glimmer of sunken treasure beneath dark waters. “I’ll think about it.”

“Will you really?” She asked skeptically.

He rolled his eyes. “Would you like me to pinkie swear to show my commitment?”

“I’ll take your word for it,” she hummed, shrugging on her coat. The motion wafted a wave of heady perfume in his direction, sharp and a little sweet.

Will swallowed thickly and turned back to the balance sheet he’d been working on before he fell asleep. The logical, practiced world of numbers was far preferable to the chaos this woman had somehow already managed to introduce to every aspect of his life. “Let the records show,” he muttered, scrawling a note into the margins, “That I think it’s a terrible idea.”

“So pessimistic,” Kym chided. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

She knocked once on the doorframe and left, her footsteps squeaking against the linoleum as they receded down the hallway. Will blinked, disoriented by the newfound silence.

“Strange woman,” he muttered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "What's the worst that could happen?"
> 
> Berceuse has a [playlist!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2uBODyzjIwgDUULirOjVi9?si=dgZbIN2QQkKPZiaFKwjY-w)  
> Follow me on [Instagram!](https://www.instagram.com/rabbitthearted/)


	3. Trois

**Kym**

By some miracle, Will agreed to take the night off. Kym attributed this fact to her skill in the art of persuasion — she was, after all, the captain of her high school’s debate team — but his acquiescence more likely had to do with the sleep deprivation. They say that your critical thinking ability erodes somewhere in the fortieth hour without sleep.

“You know,” Kym had mused, leaning around him to return the cap to a bottle of olive oil. “When one of your employees is nearly nine months pregnant and they’re _not_ the most sleep-deprived person in the room, that’s really saying something.”

Will blinked up from the cutting board he had previously been squinting at. She wondered if he’d been expecting the shallots to dice themselves. “Were you talking to me?”

“No, I was addressing the olive oil, actually.”

“Very funny,” he muttered. She studied his hand as he resumed dicing the shallots. He barely moved his wrist, as though he was merely suggesting that the knife cut the produce rather than doing it himself. There was an elegance to his movements when he cooked, a quality that seemed neither fully intrinsic nor taught. It was completely stupid how cool it looked.

“You were saying something about sleep deprivation?”

Kym realized that she must have looked like some kind of weird fetishist, staring at his hand like that. In her defense, it was a very nice hand, one that tapered off into slender digits that practically begged to be allowed in the vicinity of a piano. Briefly, she wondered whether he played, and then chastised herself for caring. He was her boss. She had no business thinking about his hands so intently. Or any other extremity, for that matter.

“Ladell?”

She cleared her throat with a cough. “Right. I was asking you if you’d given our conversation any thought.”

Will dusted his palms against the front of his jacket and looked up at her. “The conversation about taking the night off,” he clarified flatly.

Kym nodded. “I heard they put a bunch of new period dramas on Netflix. You could order takeout and watch _Pride and Prejudice._ ”

“I’m more of a _Sense and Sensibility_ guy, actually,” Will quipped dryly, narrowing his eyes.

He flicked his wrist again. _Shick, shick, shick._ “ _If_ I agree to this—”

Her lips melted into a self-satisfied grin.

“ _If,_ ” he interjected pointedly, “I agree to this, I’m trusting that you or Lila will call me if anything happens. Immediately.”

Kym flattened her palm over her sternum. “Cross my heart and hope to die. Et cetera.”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I.” 

He blinked up at the ceiling, quiet with contemplation. Kym could practically envision the pros and cons list he was drafting in his head. She imagined he did that for everything. The process of selecting his outfit every morning probably involved a very detailed statistical analysis of the benefits of wearing the blue socks versus the black ones.

“Fine,” Will murmured, returning his attention to her.

Kym couldn’t even remember what they were talking about. “Fine?”

He rolled his eyes. They were even more arresting up close, bright and reflective and guileless. “I’ll take the night off. Happy?”

Kym arched a skeptical brow into her hairline. “Is this psychological warfare, or something? You have to be messing with me.”

Will took a half-step closer. She found that it was increasingly difficult to focus on the content of what he was saying when she was close enough to smell the fragrance he used, something that was probably called sandalwood and came packaged in a tiny glass vial. Kym tilted her chin up gamely, meeting his stare head-on.

But what she wasn’t anticipating was for him to brace one of his palms against the edge of the countertop and lean down until they were eye-level. Her back was flush against the metal, cold and unforgiving between her shoulder blades. But his breath,by contrast, was so very warm, drifting pleasantly over her face as he exhaled in concession.

“If I was messing with you,” he began slowly, “You’d know.”

Kym realized, with a pang of annoyance, that she probably looked like a slack-jawed idiot. “Right,” she muttered dumbly.

Will’s gaze drifted over her face fitfully before landing firmly on the apple of her cheek.Something about the attentiveness in his expression made her skin feel hot, as though he’d physically touched her there.

He cleared his throat hoarsely. “You have flour on your face.”

Kym swiped the pad of her thumb over her cheek. Sure enough, it came back coated with flour. “Thanks.”

Will nodded curtly and turned to leave. “I’m trusting you with my kitchen, Ladell. I don’t take that lightly.”

“To be fair,” Kym replied, when the rational part of her brain had regained control over her consciousness, “You don’t take many things lightly.”

“My kitchen least of all.”

Kym forced her best megawatt smile, teeth and all. “You have nothing to worry about.”

He scoffed, shifting the handle of the knife over his palm. “Where you’re concerned,” he mumbled, “There’s always something to worry about.”

The quip stung, but she masked it with a noncommittal hum. “I’ll take your skepticism as a good sign.”

Will glanced at her with a quirk in his brow. “Will you?”

“If your expectations are already low, things can only get better from here,” Kym mused. Her tone sounded remarkably optimistic for the staggering amount of panic she was currently experiencing. When she glanced up from the stovetop, he was still watching her in that disquieting way of his, soft and intentional and self-assured. Something in his expression made her feel guilty for her feigned nonchalance, the undue trust he’d placed in her.

“Everything will be fine.”

* * *

The first time Kieran said it, the words didn’t fully register. So Kym asked him to repeat them. Three times, to be precise.

“Lauren Sinclair is here.” Kieran dropped a stack of dirty dishes into the sinkwith a sudsy clatter. “And we’re all fucked.”

Of all of the catastrophically bad things that could have happened in Will’s absence — faulty equipment, food shortages, a power outage — even she couldn’t have predicted a Machiavellian horror of this degree. In the end, she had to hand it to the universe; at least it was creative in its endeavor to get her killed.

As she considered her options, the image of Will’s disapproving scowl surfaced in her mind unbidden. Kym knew that to call him was to admit defeat, and that prospect stung worse than the possibility of screwing up and dealing with a tongue lashing of nuclear proportions later.

Lila was pacing a repetitive circuit around the kitchen island. “I had no idea she’d be coming tonight,” she groaned. “We have to call Will—”

“No,” Kym snapped. “And stop pacing. You’re going to go into labor.” She returned her focus to Kieran, who was now watching them with his chin placed in his upturned palm, one elbow planted against the countertop. “Why are we fucked?”

He blinked slowly, as though the answer should have been obvious. “Haven’t you read any of her articles?”

She shook her head. Kym didn’t bother herself with keeping up with food journalism. Given the fact that whole life and career revolved around food, she found that she was far more inclined to waste her braincells on garbage reality television after work.

“She called Gordon Ramsay’s salmon tartare _bland and uninspired,_ ” Kieran replied dryly. “If that’s any indicator.”

Kym pushed a breath through her teeth. She wasn’t naturally commanding, in the way that Will was. The guy had enough charisma to rival goddamn JFK. But she’d gotten out of stickier situations before, like when her phone died and she’d gotten lost in rural Tuscany. Or when she dropped ice in the fryolator at her first real sous chef job.

Kym pulled her phone out of her pocket and Googled Lauren Sinclair. True to Kieran’s word, dozens of articles came up — Variety, Bon Appetit, the New York Times — and very few of them were favorable. Gordon Ramsay had some choice words for her in response to the salmon tartare review in question.

“Your job,” Kym replied, glancing up from the screen to regard Kieran with a look she hoped read resolute, “Is to charm the pants off of her. She’d better be halfway down the aisle by the time her meal is over.”

Kieran grinned crookedly. “That shouldn’t be difficult.”

Kym rolled her eyes and turned back to Lila. She was restlessly twisting her wedding ring around her finger, watching Kym with her lip pulled between her teeth. “Are you sure we shouldn’t call Will?”

“Where is your feminist spirit?” Kym huffed. “We don’t need _men_.” She tossed Kieran an apologetic glance. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Kieran replied, twisting the cork off of a bottle of wine. “Although, the whole plot to seduce the food critic does strike me as patently unfeminist.”

“You win some, you lose some,” Kym grumbled.

And so it went.

* * *

Kieran was riding on a high after a flawless first course of seared scallops in white wine sauce.

“She was originally going to order the escargots, you know,” he drawled.“But I convinced her that the scallops would go better with the Cab Sauv.”

“It’s too early to celebrate,” Kym replied tersely, peeling a clove of garlic with the blunt edge of her knife. Her eyes had been glued to the ticket window ever since Sinclair’s first order came in. “And stop smirking. You look like an idiot.” She turned to Lukas. “Fire a steak, rare. Don’t take your eyes off of it.”

Kym darted out of the way as Lila breezed through the double doors without sparing them a backwards glance, tittering something about tomatoes, or possibly tornadoes. Kym hoped it was the former, for everyone’s sake.

Lukas glowered at her as he dropped a cut of wagyu onto the flat top. “I’ll kill you if you put my wife into premature labor over this.”

Kym tilted her head coyly. “Your threats of homicide are starting to ring hollow, Randall. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were all bark and no bite.”

He cocked one dark brow. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Kym turned back to her station with a scoff. “Keep your eyes on that grill.” She knew that Sinclair was making a strategic decision in ordering the steak for her entree. It was deceptively simple and infinitely complex, the hallmark of any restaurant worth their salt. A French kitchen that couldn’t fire a proper steak sure as hell wouldn’t know their way around a more nuanced dish.

When Lukas placed the steak under the heat lamp, Kym was already prepared with the garnish. She slipped her tongue between her teeth as she plated the greens, trying to remember how Will arranged them — he had an infuriating habit of making everything look like it belonged on the cover of a magazine.

“This is for fourteen,” Kym called to Kieran.

He scooped it up and balanced it in the crook of his arm on his way out the door. “Heard, chef.”

Watching that plate exit the kitchen was what she assumed sending your kid off to college felt like, except in this case, her kid was a cut of wagyu. A particularly career-defining cut of wagyu.

Kym’s fingers curled around the cold edge of the countertop while she waited, poised in the center of the maelstrom as the kitchen staff moved around her. By the time Kieran reappeared through the swinging doors, she was nearly lightheaded with anticipation.

“God, were you moving at a snail’s pace?” Kym breathed, rushing forward to meet him.

In retrospect, the look on Kieran’s face should have been her first sign that the rest of the evening was rapidly shaping up to go south. His mouth was pressed into a humorless line, his jaw taut as a bowstring. He held up the plate for her inspection.

It was _Sinclair’s_ plate.

And the steak was untouched.

For a chef, there was no dread quite like seeing a dish re-enter the kitchen in tact. When the customer in question happened to be a food critic, that dread graduated from inconvenient to apocalyptic.

“Shit.”

Lila drew to a stop beside Kym. When she caught sight of the steak, she echoed Kym’s sentiment, this time with more gusto. Things were really dismal when Lila Desroses was driven to cursing.

Kym kneaded her temple with her forefinger. She was starting to understand why Will kept a bottle of Advil in his office. “What did she say?”

“Overdone.”

“Bullshit,” Lukas piped up from behind the grill. “That was perfectly rare—”

“It’s fine,” Kym interjected, tossing her palm up to quiet him. “I’ll fire the next one. Bring her more wine, Kieran. On the house.”

“Wine won’t fix that attitude,” Kieran grumbled, turning to the wine cellar. “She’s got Upper East side written all over her.”

It appeared that their amicability during the appetizer course was a thing of the past. Kym dropped the next cut of steak onto the pan with a hissing pop and then depressed the center of the steak with the tip of her tongs. “Leave it alone. Customer is always right.” She glanced up from the grill. “And you’re from Brooklyn, which is basically the same thing.”

“But—”

“But nothing. Will will murder me if she gives us a bad review, Kieran. I’ll be the subject of one of those true podcasts.” She shuddered. “ _Podcasts._ ”

“Fine,” Kieran muttered petulantly. “But I’m only doing this because I like you.” He shouldered through the doors to the dining room, wine glass in hand.

Lila kneaded her shoulder reassuringly as she passed. “You’re doing well, Kym.”

“I already messed up with the first round.” Kym chewed the inside of her lip, inspecting the sear on the underside of the steak.

“And you’ll recover,” Lila asserted softly. “Will isn’t perfect either.”

“That much I know to be true,” Kym muttered dryly.

Kym had cooked more steaks in her career than she could count, and she knew a rare one like the back of her hand. Seared on the outside, fleshy red in the center. What Sinclair was asking for was practically blue. She supposed it wasn’t her business if the woman _wanted_ to get food poisoning.

By the time Kym slid the new plate over the counter, Kieran was already back from the dining room, waiting at the other end to receive it. It didn’t bode well that his expression was positively murderous.

“I don’t know what her problem is,” he gritted, grabbing the plate with a haughty flourish. “It’s like she’s _trying_ to pick a fight.”

“Why would she be trying to pick a fight?” Kym groaned. “You’re so dramatic—”

“Because she’s an obstinate shrew,” Kieran interjected. “The first steak wasn’t even overdone, and now she’s claiming that I refilled her glass with a Malbec, which doesn’t even make _sense_ —”

She’d never heard anyone insulted in such a Shakespearean way. Despite the dismal situation, her lips twitched with amusement. “Obstinate shrew?”

“Piss off,” He spat, breezing back through the doors without another word.

“Don’t forget to smile!” Kym shouted.

Lila tittered anxiously over Kym’s shoulder while they waited for him to return for the second time. Optimistically, Kym reasoned that they probably would have heard something by now if homicide was being committed in the dining room.

“He’s taking forever,” Kym gritted, tapping her fingertips against the counter repetitively.

“Maybe that’s a good sign,” Lila hummed. “He was back right away the first time.”

“Or they’ve killed each other,” Lukas suggested blithely.

Lila shot him a glare. “They have not _killed_ each other.”

When the doors opened again, all three heads snapped up in unison. This time, Kieran dropped it onto the countertop without preamble. The ceramic clattered against the metal and nearly slid off before Lila darted her arm out to steady it.

“Overdone,” Kieran gritted. “Said if she wanted it cremated, she wouldn’t have asked for it rare.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kym huffed, pressing the tip of her finger in the center of the steak. “Any rarer and it’d answer to _Bessie_.”

There wasn’t a chance in hell they’d get a favorable review at this point; the odds of that happening died somewhere between the scallops and the second glass of wine. She figured she might as well preemptively blacklist herself from every fine dining restaurant within fifty miles of the city, and then repeat the same exercise for the next fifty miles.

“We need to cut our losses,” Lila sighed. “Comp her meal—”

“No!”

Everyone turned to look at Kym following her outburst. “No,” she repeated, quieter this time. She dusted her palms against the front of her jacket and turned to Kieran. “Go apologize.”

His mouth dropped open in horror. “What?”

“This is your fault. She’s just taking it out on the food because she doesn’t like you.”

Kieran’s blue eyes hardened. “I have nothing to apologize for.”

She planted her palms on her hips and took a step forward until they were toe-to-toe. “Will is going to _kill me_ for this. And then he’s going to necromance my body back to life and kill me _again_.”

His voice wavered tentatively over the din of the kitchen. “I don’t think necromance is a verb.”

Her eyes fell shut of their own accord. “Whatever you did to upset her, fix it. I don’t care if you have to grovel. You’re the most charming man on the goddamn planet. So go _be charming_.”

“ _Fix_ it?” Kieran spluttered, tossing his arm out in the direction of the dining room. “The woman is practically feral.”

“How did you even _manage_ to piss off the city’s most renowned critic in thirty minutes flat?” She paused. “Actually, don’t answer that. It’ll just depress me.”

“She was set on hating me from the moment I introduced myself.” When Kym popped one eye open speculatively at that, he actually had the audacity to _smirk_. “Can’t fix bad taste.”

“Figure it out,” Kym spat, shoving him towards the dining room. “Or else.”

“Or else _what—_ ”

She slammed the door shut and slumped against the doorframe.

“I’m going to kill him.”

**Will**

He was going to kill her.

Will knew that something had happened the moment he'd stepped foot in his kitchen that following morning, with the first and most obvious sign being that his staff scattered like cockroaches upon his arrival. Heads down and shoulders bowed, they skirted around him as though he was something caustic.

There was nothing quite like a bunch of utterly terrified subordinates to compound his fears that he was turning into his father.

He reached out and gripped Lila’s elbow when she tried to brush past him on her way to the walk-in.

“What’s going on?”

Lila slowed to a halt, her eyes fixed straight ahead, as though the doors of the industrial freezer offered the most fascinating sight in the world. “Going on?”

“No one’s breathed a word to me all morning.”

Lila’s gaze darted to the floor. “Really,” she murmured. “How strange.”

“Strange indeed,” Will drawled. “Care to explain?”

The way her mouth pinched at that suggested that she did not, in fact, care to explain. “Bad case of the Mondays?”

“Try again.” It was suspicious in and of itself that he hadn’t seen Ladell yet, which probably accounted for why the kitchen was so quiet. “Where’s Kym?”

He hadn’t thought it possible for her complexion to pale even further. “Kym?”

“Yes, Kym. My sous chef.” Will stuck his palm out so that it was level with his chest. “About this tall. Talks a lot.” His eyes darted around the kitchen, then back to her face. “Uncharacteristically elusive at the moment.”

Lila sucked her lip between her teeth, pulling her elbow from his grasp. Her expression fogged with contemplation before settling into grim resolve as she reached into her coat pocket and withdrew her cell phone. He hadn’t the faintest idea what conclusion she’d just arrived at in her head, but her expression suggested a dilemma in the vein of either sawing her own foot off or dying of infection.

She typed something onto the display and then held it out it towards him, her eyes downcast.

Will blinked at the phone. “What is this?”

“Just watch it,” she muttered.

The video was taken on an iPhone, propped up against the edge of a wine decanter that blurred in the foreground. Despite the video’s cinematic shortcomings, the content was crystal clear.

His waiter was holding a raw steak in the face of New York City’s most acclaimed food critic.

This had to be a joke. A prank. When Will glanced incredulously at Lila, she shook her head, confirming that he hadn’t accidentally taken a hallucinogen with his breakfast that morning.

Confirming that this had really happened.

“Maybe if you weren’t such a _trust fund brat_ —”

Will snatched the phone from Lila’s hand and rewound it from the beginning. Their argument was mostly indecipherable over the clamor of the dining room, but it involved a lot of gesticulations, and, judging by what he could gather from lip reading, a colorful variety of curse words.

“Is this _rare enough_ for you?” Kieran spat, slamming the meat down on the tablecloth. The chairs of her leg screeched against the floor as she leapt up to dodge the blood that splattered against the linen.

The camera closed in on Lauren’s expression, her face a pallid, aghast smudge in the flickering candlelight. And then, as though remembering herself, her mouth curled into a snarl. She darted forward, reaching across the table to curl her fists in his collar. “Are you out of your fucking _mind_?!”

“Yeah!” Kieran shouted, batting her hands away. They grappled like that for a moment, swatting at one another’s hands like schoolchildren. Eventually, Kieran broke away, sweeping his arm out in front of him in a grandiose bow. “That’s why I’m in therapy!”

Blissfully, the video ended there, but not before fading into a title card emblazoned with the hashtag “#TrustFundBrat.” He realized, with a wave of icy dread, that the video was currently sitting at twenty thousand retweets. Twenty thousand people had seen this,including, evidently, the hosts of Good Morning America.

Will handed Lila’s phone back to her and took off down the hallway, ignoring Lila’s pleas echoing over his shoulder.

It had taken a single evening for his restaurant to become the laughingstock of the internet, and he knew exactly who was responsible.

**Kym**

Kym had heard her name spoken countless times.

She’d never heard it spoken quite like _that._

Sharp as a whip’s crack, a mean little sound like splintered china. She spun around at a glacial pace, delaying the inevitable.

Will's flaxen hair was parted neatly, still damp from the shower and curling slightly at the nape of his neck. He had a hard, low-set brow and his pretty mouth was folded into a scowl that suggested he knew exactly what had transpired the prior evening. He’d cuffed his black jacket at the elbows and his arms were crossed over his chest, knuckles blanched with restraint. They looked like they were itching to close around something.

Probably her neck.

“Good morning, Will,” Kym managed, as though it was completely fortuitous that she’d run into him here, at the restaurant he owned.

Kym set down the box of strawberries she’d been unloading from the delivery truck. “How was your—”

“You can drop it,” Will cut in coldly. “Lila already told me what happened.”

She exhaled a gusty sigh, loosening the tension in her shoulders. “Right. So, I can explain—”

“Oh!” He tossed his head back in a mirthless laugh. “Can you, Ladell? I’d absolutely love to hear it.”

Kym hated the way anger contorted his features, hardening the planes of his face until she was sure she’d get a paper cut if she drifted her fingertips over it. It didn’t suit him. “How is that my fault? Kieran is the one who lost his mind—”

“You were in charge, Kym,” Will snapped. There was anger in his voice, but something pleading there, too. His arm darted out, and for a moment, she thought he might shake her shoulders to impress his point. But he snatched it right back and let it fall limply at his side. “When you’re in charge,” he continued quietly, “Everything is your responsibility. _Everything_ falls on you.”

Will snapped his mouth shut, darting his gaze away from her face. For a long moment, they simply faced one another in silence. It was stagnant, oppressive, save for the rhythmic tick of the nearby radiator. When he turned to wrench open the door to his office, he didn’t have to ask Kym to follow him inside.

It would, after all, be in poor form to fire your sous chef in front of everyone. She supposed it was big of him to offer her that decency.

“How could you let this happen?”

Will kicked the door shut with his heel, and then it was just the two of them. The office was swathed in a cloying darkness that felt thick in her ears and the back of her throat, and through the the horizontal slats of light that slipped through the closed blinds, she could barely see his sawing back and forth in a furious impulse.

Given the more pressing matters at hand, she wasn’t exactly in a position to be unpacking the psychological implications of how ridiculously attractive she found him when he was when he was angry. She assumed that the thought had to have derived from the prehistoric part of her brain.

Her voice was a wimpy rasp when she finally spoke. “I thought I could handle it,” she offered lamely.

Will sucked his teeth cruelly. “Clearly.”

Something in the sound edged against Kym’s nerves like a live wire. “Oh, come on,” she spat. “I obviously wasn’t expecting Lauren Sinclair to show up—”

“Of course you weren’t,” Will hissed. He was near enough that she felt his exhalation against the exposed column of her neck, blooming over her skin like a rising tide.

Kym recoiled, stunned by his skepticism. “Sure, Will. Because this was totally within the realm of things I wanted to happen. Right up there with giving myself a root canal and getting audited by the IRS.”

“I didn’t say that you _wanted_ for it to happen.” His nostrils flared on a ragged inhalation. “I’m saying that you don’t _think._ You’re impulsive. Irrational—”

Kym hadn’t noticed she had pulled her lip between her teeth until it split, pooling warm salt over her tongue. “Maybe I don’t think,” she murmured agreeably. “But I guess I’d rather be a _fool_ than a coward.” 

Will's cheek twitched, the barb registering in his features as though she’d physically struck him. He leaned in slowly, bracing his palm above her head until she was caged in between the wall and his heaving chest. When he spoke, his voice was barely louder than a whisper, but it cleaved through her like a lightning strike.

“Is that so?”

“Yeah,” Kym snapped. It was a petulant retort, but in her defense, it was pretty hard to focus on the quality of her rapport under the current circumstances. “I’m surprised you aren’t happy, really,” she added cooly. “You’ve practically been waiting for me to screw up.”

Will's gaze rolled over her with slow, placid focus, his lids lowered to half-mast. A muscle in his jaw twitched with restraint. “Is that what you think?” He murmured, after a moment’s pause. “That I want you to fail?”

There was absolutely nowhere neutral to look. Looking at his eyes was misery, and looking at the floor was just pathetic. Her shoes squeaked against the tile as she shuffled them restlessly. “What else am I supposed to think?”

His palm dropped from the wall to close around the curve of her shoulder, firm and warm through the thin cotton of her jacket. “Do you ever just _hold still_?”

“What?”

“You’re always moving. It drives me crazy.” Will’s other hand drifted over her arm, his touch feather-light as it traversed a slow circuit from her shoulder to her elbow, then back again. His voice was a rolling growl that she felt everywhere, inching over her skin like a drop of condensation down a windowpane. “Everything you do drives me crazy.”

Her chin snapped up to meet his gaze. It was flinty and unforgiving, narrowed onto her like a pair of sniper dots. What she might have said, if she could find her voice, was something about how the feeling was mutual.

But she didn’t get the chance to before his lips were on hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sir, this is a wendy’s
> 
>   
> [Is that rare enough for you?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vtgaAq6ap0)
> 
> Berceuse has a [playlist!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2uBODyzjIwgDUULirOjVi9?si=dgZbIN2QQkKPZiaFKwjY-w)  
> Follow me on [Instagram!](https://www.instagram.com/rabbitthearted/)

**Author's Note:**

> "I'm gonna kill you, if you don't beat me to it." -Phoebe Bridgers, Kyoto. Title credit goes to Luna, who is far better at naming fictional restaurants than I could ever hope to be. 
> 
> Let me know what you think of this!
> 
> -Rabbit
> 
> Instagram: @rabbitthearted


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